Inspectorate praised the telecommunications company Telia for openness after the company gave details of a report showing that more than 1,100 of its customers were bugged in the first half of 2016.
The report concerns figures for bugs in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Spain, says newspaper Dagens Næringsliv.
The number demonstrates legal intervention of secret monitoring in real time. Examples include ‘the monitoring of phone lines, control of who is calling whom, when and for how long’, said CEO Abraham Foss in Telia Norway. Telia want more openness about eavesdropping.
The report also shows that Telia declined 54 inquiries about interceptions in the first 6 months of this year.
‘We attach great importance to confidence-building. It is important that our 2.3 million customers know that we manage, openly and transparently’, said Foss, adding that the report will be submitted every six months.
Inspectorate’s Bjørn Erik Thon views Telia’s open line as positive.
‘It is important that there is transparency about police use of data, writing Telia into a tradition that American companies have represented for some years now with ‘transparency reports,’ said Thon.
Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today
